Stranger Than Fiction sure is a great movie. They pretty much had me at "Will Ferrell" to start with -- I'd rather watch him in a bad movie than most actors in a good movie. The thing about Ferrell as an actor is how thoroughly he commits to every role. In this movie he plays a guy who doesn't say much, and doesn't think much about anything but numbers, which is shown in the movie as a sort of heads-up display that floats in front of his head. This means that Ferrell can't really do what a comic actor does his whole life, which is behave a complete fool -- he plays this guy as someone who is completely not in the joke on himself. This character is the sort of person that movies are not usually about -- someone who is completely decent.

I think that this is a movie that you should see without spoilers, but the rest of the cast is amazing, the music is great, the design and costumes are perfect. It isn't a profound movie at all, but it's a great absurdist remake of "It's A Wonderful Life," and it's Capra-esque in all the right ways...

Now, see, I think there are many levels of meaning beyond that simple "carpe diem" message. I do, though, believe that movies need to be profound to be great, so you and I disagree there. Any movie can deliver a "carpe diem" message, but it takes more than that to make a great movie.